There’s a new utility library in town called es-toolkit, and it’s gunning for Lodash. 2-3x faster, 97% smaller, full TypeScript support, and using modern JavaScript APIs, es-toolkit’s just added a “Lodash compatibility layer” to ensure an identical API and 100% Lodash compatibility.

oRPC is the newest wrinkle in the Remote Procedural Call (RPC) world, and it promotes easy to build APIs that are end-to-end type-safe and adhere to OpenAPI standards. 

Stack Overflow’s 15th developer survey results are in, and the learnings are... interesting. Some of the takeaways are expected (React’s still very popular, lots of devs have at least tried AI tools), but some seem willfully wrong (SO claims it’s a new resource for devs that need to solve AI-related issues, but 43% of respondents said they rarely or never visit the site anymore). 

Either way, SO’s use has declined dramatically over the last few years due to the rise of AI, and we’ll see how much longer it can hang on as a vital part of the developer ecosystem.

Timestamps:

• 0:57 - es-toolkit update
• 7:46 - oRPC
• 17:13 - Stack Overflow Developer Survey
• 31:43 - Bolt hackathon winners
• 34:11 - Microsoft Edge Copilot Mode
• 38:46 - State of HTML survey
• 39:30 - What’s making us happy

Links:

• Paige - es-toolkit is coming for Lodash
• Jack - oRPC
• TJ - Stack Overflow 2025 survey results
• Bolt hackathon winners
• Microsoft Edge Copilot Mode
• State of HTML survey
• Paige - Monopoly Deal card game
• Jack - Gridfinity 3D printed grid storage system
• TJ - NY Times Games App

Thanks as always to our sponsor, the Blue Collar Coder channel on YouTube. You can join us in our Discord channel, explore our website and reach us via email, or talk to us on X, Bluesky, or YouTube.

• Front-end Fire website
• Blue Collar Coder on YouTube
• Blue Collar Coder on Discord
• Reach out via email
• Tweet at us on X @front_end_fire
• Follow us on Bluesky @front-end-fire.com
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GitHub is advocating for a European Union Sovereign Tech Fund to help pay the open source software developers building and maintaining software relied upon by economies and societies just like any other necessary infrastructure like roads and bridges.

Apple gets called out by the Open Web Advocacy group saying its technical rules and restrictions are blocking other browser vendors from successfully offering their own search engines to iOS users in the EU.

Last episode we talked about Amazon’s new AI coding editor Kiro, and this week, we learned about a feature called Agent Hooks which let users write automation tools that agents can use within the IDE to do predefined actions like maintaining code quality, checking for security vulnerabilities, standardizing and enforcing team processes, and more. Think of it like pre-commit hooks but with AI behind them!

Timestamps:

• 0:51 - GitHub is advocating for an EU tech fund
• 9:21 - An update on non-WebKit browsers on iOS
• 15:30 - Kiro’s agent hooks
• 26:28 - Kilo Code
• 28:35 - eslint-config-prettier got hacked
• 33:15 - @media(hover: hover)
• 36:05 - What’s making us happy

Links:

• Paige - GitHub is advocating for an EU Sovereign Tech Fund
• Jack - Kiro’s Agent Hooks
• TJ - An update on non-WebKit browsers on iOS
• Kilo Code - open source AI agent VS Code extension (not to be confused with the Kiro fork)
• Popular npm package eslint-config-prettier got hacked
• @media(hover:hover)
• Paige - Relax Meditation app
• Jack - Physical books like the Annihilation series
• TJ - Apple Watch series 10

Thanks as always to our sponsor, the Blue Collar Coder channel on YouTube. You can join us in our Discord channel, explore our website and reach us via email, or talk to us on X, Bluesky, or YouTube.

• Front-end Fire website
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• Reach out via email
• Tweet at us on X @front_end_fire
• Follow us on Bluesky @front-end-fire.com
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There are so many headlines about AI IDE Windsurf as of late, but we’ll try to catch you up. 

First, OpenAI wanted to buy Windsurf for $3B, but the deal fell through due to Microsoft. Next, Google hired Windsurf’s top execs and researchers to work on its AI products, but didn’t buy the Windsurf IDE, for $2.4B. Then, Cognition bought the remainder of Windsurf’s IP (and its staff) to integrate into its own products like Devin. And did we mention this all happened in the span of 72 hours?

Amazon released its own AI-powered IDE called Kiro, and it claims it will bring structure to vibe-coding with "specs" to appeal to the enterprise companies. Kiro transforms prompts into structured specifications, technical designs, and implementation plans complete with testing.

Next.js 15.4 debuted with a few notable highlights like 100% integration test compatibility for its new Turbopack bundler, and an experimental feature flag called `browserDebugInfoInTerminal` that will forward browser console output to the local terminal so CLI coding agents and AI IDEs like Cursor can see (and fix) client side errors. That sounds super useful.

Timestamps:

• 1:07 - Windsurf drama explained
• 11:28 - Amazon’s new Kiro editor
• 26:29 - Next 15.4
• 33:33 - Figma’s new glass effect
• 39:19 - Lee Robinson leaves Vercel
• 41:09 - What’s making us happy

Links:

• Paige - Next.js 15.4, including `browserDebugInfoInTerminal` flag for AI agents
• Jack - Kiro AI IDE for spec-driven development
• TJ - OpenAI’s Windsurf deal falls through - and Windsurf’s CEO is going to Google
• Lee Robinson leaves Vercel after 5 years
• Figma has Glass Effect
• Paige - The Will of the Many novel
• Jack - Ninja Single Serve coffee maker and SF Bay Coffee compostable K-cups
• TJ - Tabletop shuffleboard

Thanks as always to our sponsor, the Blue Collar Coder channel on YouTube. You can join us in our Discord channel, explore our website and reach us via email, or talk to us on X, Bluesky, or YouTube.

• Front-end Fire website
• Blue Collar Coder on YouTube
• Blue Collar Coder on Discord
• Reach out via email
• Tweet at us on X @front_end_fire
• Follow us on Bluesky @front-end-fire.com
• Subscribe to our YouTube channel @Front-EndFirePodcast

Tech companies continue the acquisition spree of the summer when Vercel announces it’s hired the creators of NuxtLabs, the folks who build metaframework Nuxt and server runtime Nitro.

Figma returns to the newscycle with the introduction of its Dev Mode MCP server. This server allows agentic coding tools to pull in design context directly from Figma designs. Think: getting code, image, or variable context for a specific design selection or even porting over Figma designs directly into a code base for use.

The AI browser race heats up as both OpenAI and Perplexity make news with announcements and early access for their own AI-powered web browsers. Details are limited but both companies are putting their AI search engines front and center to try and steal some Google Chrome’s market share.

In this week’s Lightning News, there’s a new framework for building and shipping MCP applications called Xmcp. Focused on developer experience, Xmcp claims you can bootstrap an MCP server from scratch or plug it into an existing Next.js or Express app with one simple command. 

Finally, the Fire Starters section is back this week with the debut of CSS conditional if() statements in Chrome v137. Out of the box, if() works with style(), media(), and support() queries, and unlocks things like state-based styling with very straightforward syntax that uses a series of condition-value pairs, and even allows for an else statement at the end.

Timestamps:

• 1:13 - Vercel acquires NuxtLabs
• 5:54 - Figma releases an MCP Server
• 13:41 - OpenAI and Perplexity announce browsers
• 26:08 - Xmcp framework
• 29:06 - CSS conditions with if()
• 33:05 - What’s making us happy

Links:

• Paige - NuxtLabs joins Vercel
• Jack - Figma Dev Mode MCP server 
• TJ - Upcoming web browsers from OpenAI and Perplexity. 
• Xmcp framework for building MCP applications
• CSS conditionals with if() statements
• Paige - Somebody Feed Phil TV series
• TJ - Murderbot

Thanks as always to our sponsor, the Blue Collar Coder channel on YouTube. You can join us in our Discord channel, explore our website and reach us via email, or talk to us on X, Bluesky, or YouTube.

• Front-end Fire website
• Blue Collar Coder on YouTube
• Blue Collar Coder on Discord
• Reach out via email
• Tweet at us on X @front_end_fire
• Follow us on Bluesky @front-end-fire.com
• Subscribe to our YouTube channel @Front-EndFirePodcast

The big tech company conferences continued this summer with Vercel hosting Vercel Ship 2025. As you’d expect there was lots of talk about AI and Vercel’s AI Cloud: tools, infrastructure, and platform enhancements to build AI agents and help AI agents use Vercel.

On July 1, hosting platform Cloudflare declared Content Independence Day, and changed its settings to block AI crawlers by default unless they pay creators for their content. While we absolutely support this move, Cloudflare’s future vision of a marketplace where content creators and AI companies come together and compensation is based on how much content “furthers knowledge” seems idealistic, but we’ll have to wait and see.

Serverless Postgres database company Neon has a new product called Neon Launchpad that can create an instant Neon database with zero configuration or account creation. Users get an automatically generated connection string, 72 hours to claim a new database, and even automatic database seeding with SQL scripts for schema and data initialization.

Timestamps:

• 2:13 - Vercel Ship event updates
• 7:49 - Cloudfare declares content independence day
• 16:12 - Neon Launchpad
• 20:03 - Figma IPO
• 22:24 - Deno v. Oracle trademark update
• 25:10 - Antropic lets Claude run a vending machine
• 32:21 - What’s making us happy

Links:

• News:
  • Paige - Cloudflare declares July 1 Content Independence Day
  • Jack - Neon Launchpad instant DBs
  • TJ - Vercel Ship 2025
• Lightning:
  • Figma has filed for an IPO to trade on the stock exchange as “FIG”
  • Claude ran a vending machine, and the first attempt at “vibe management” wasn’t great
  • Deno v. Oracle trademark update
• What Makes Us Happy this Week:
  • Paige - Squid Game season 3
  • Jack - F1: The Movie
  • TJ - Bobby Banilla Day

Thanks as always to our sponsor, the Blue Collar Coder channel on YouTube. You can join us in our Discord channel, explore our website and reach us via email, or talk to us on X, Bluesky, or YouTube.

• Front-end Fire website
• Blue Collar Coder on YouTube
• Blue Collar Coder on Discord
• Reach out via email
• Tweet at us on X @front_end_fire
• Follow us on Bluesky @front-end-fire.com
• Subscribe to our YouTube channel @Front-EndFirePodcast

The field of AI coding agent CLIs is crowded and getting more so by the day, and our co-host Jack has tried them all so you don’t have to. The big four are: OpenAI’s Codex, Anthropic’s Claude Code, Google’s Gemini Code, and Amazon Q, along with some lesser known CLIs like AmpCode, OpenCode, and (the already shut down) Anon Kode. After trying everything, Jack says Anthropic’s Sonnet models and Claude Code are still the best.

Google’s quietly been working on new LLM-powered web APIs that rely on Google’s Gemini Nano model to power browser features like language detection and translation, and writing and proofreading, and Mozilla is concerned devs will create apps based on Gemini’s behavior.

Less than two months after Figma’s big Config conference, it shared it's acquired OS headless CMS Payload. Continuing the effort to make Figma a central hub for digital product creation, Figma’s adding a CMS to the mix so marketers and designers can more easily update website content as needed.

Timestamps:

• 1:01 - Jack’s AI tool roundup
• 10:34 - Mozilla’s concerns about Google building AI into Chrome
• 19:16 - Figma buys Payload
• 24:22 - Firefox gets vertical tabs
• 27:15 - Jack’s macOS 26 experiment goes wrong
• 30:36 - Anthropic destroys millions of print books
• 38:06 - What’s making us happy

Links:

• Paige - Figma buys CMS Payload
• Jack - State of the AI CLIs: Codex, OpenCode, AmpCode, Gemini Code, Claude Code, Amazon Q
• TJ - Mozilla’s concerns about Google building AI into Chrome

Lightning News:

• Firefox v140
• Jack's MacOS 26 upgrade gone wrong
• Anthropic destroyed millions of print books to build its AI models

What Makes Us Happy this Week:

• Paige - Rock Paper Scissors novel
• Jack - Tamolitch Falls and Final Destination movie series
• TJ - Watkins Glen State Park

Thanks as always to our sponsor, the Blue Collar Coder channel on YouTube. You can join us in our Discord channel, explore our website and reach us via email, or talk to us on X, Bluesky, or YouTube.

• Front-end Fire website
• Blue Collar Coder on YouTube
• Blue Collar Coder on Discord
• Reach out via email
• Tweet at us on X @front_end_fire
• Follow us on Bluesky @front-end-fire.com
• Subscribe to our YouTube channel @Front-EndFirePodcast

In this episode:

• Linting is getting a whole lot faster with Oxlint
• Your browser is becoming part of your wellness routine
• And Copilot is getting more agentic features

Chapter Markers:

• 1:05 - Oxlint
• 7:05 - Opera Air
• 11:24 - GitHub Copilot coding agent
• 18:45 - More Remix v3 updates
• 23:56 - What makes us happy

Links:

• Paige - void0's Oxlint 1.0
• Jack - Wellness stuff in Opera’s Air Browser
• TJ - GitHub Copilot coding agent in public preview

Lightning News:

• Remix v3 goes further off the rails, names itself “spiritual successor to the web”

What Makes Us Happy this Week:

• Paige - ALookBackInHistory Instagram account
• Jack - Spiritfarer game
• TJ - Formula 1: Drive to Survive TV series

Thanks as always to our sponsor, the Blue Collar Coder channel on YouTube. You can join us in our Discord channel, explore our website and reach us via email, or talk to us on X, Bluesky, or YouTube.

• Front-end Fire website
• Blue Collar Coder on YouTube
• Blue Collar Coder on Discord
• Reach out via email
• Tweet at us on X @front_end_fire
• Follow us on Bluesky @front-end-fire.com
• Subscribe to our YouTube channel @Front-EndFirePodcast

We first reported on Evan You’s company void0 back in October, 2024, and now Evan and co are making good on their promise to rework the entire JS toolchain from the ground up with the release of Rolldown-Vite. The new package is a drop-in replacement for the Vite bundler we all know and love, with benefits like production build time reductions of up to 16x and memory usage decreases of up to 100x. Replacement is easy and the perf gains are real. Try it today.

Apple just held WWDC25 and announced big updates in Safari 26 beta. Favicons get replaced with SVG icons, any website can be a web app on iOS and iPadOS, there’s a brand new HTML element for visionOS, CSS anchor positioning for popovers is supported as well as scroll-driven animations, and much more. Suffice it to say, Safari’s got some slick new features under the hood. The jury is still very much out on the gooey, glassmorphic UI design that Apple also unveiled at WWDC, however.

The Browser Company, who made the niche, but well liked Arc browser, has been working on a new AI-first browser called Dia, and this week it’s available early access for Arc Members. At first glance Dia feels similar to other “agentic” browsers, giving users a chat input and the ability to chat about content in tabs or links, but it also shows off skills like connecting to calendars to schedule meetings or composing text that can be inserted into emails. We’ll report back after we’ve had a chance to test Dia out for a bit.

Chapter markers:

• 1:00 - void0’s Rolldown-Vite
• 5:52 - Safari 26 beta
• 21:26 - Dia, the new AI-browser from The Browser Company
• 29:38 - Cursor raises $900 million 

Links:

• Paige - void0's Rolldown-Vite
• Jack - Dia, the new AI-browser from The Browser Company
• TJ - Safari 26 beta

Lightning News:

• Cursor raises $900 million

What Makes Us Happy this Week:

• Paige - Paradise TV series
• Jack - Ballerina movie 
• TJ - Apple Vision Pro on The Price is Right

Thanks as always to our sponsor, the Blue Collar Coder channel on YouTube. You can join us in our Discord channel, explore our website and reach us via email, or talk to us on X, Bluesky, or YouTube.

• Front-end Fire website
• Blue Collar Coder on YouTube
• Blue Collar Coder on Discord
• Reach out via email
• Tweet at us on X @front_end_fire
• Follow us on Bluesky @front-end-fire.com
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OpenAI has a new API in beta called the Realtime API, which enables speech conversations with LLMs. Real-time text and audio processing means users can have conversations with voice agents and voice-enabled apps, and OpenAI makes it simple to connect via WebRTC or WebSockets.

Several months ago, The Browser Company, abruptly announced they were stopping work on Arc browser in favor of building a completely new, AI-first browser called Dia. Now, the company’s CEO has released a letter detailing why these decisions were made and what the future holds for The Browser Company. Details on Dia are vague, but the team is optimistic they can build “a true successor to the browser”.

AI-enabled coding IDE Cursor hit v1.0, this week with a bunch of notable features. Notable highlights in this release include: BugBot, which automatically reviews PRs and identifies bugs and issues, Background Agent (Cursor’s remote coding agent) for all users, Memories to help Cursor remember facts and conversations within projects for future use, and one-click MCP install and OAuth support.

Timestamps:

• 1:10 - OpenAI’s realtime agent API
• 10:03 - The Browser Company Kills Arc
• 16:53 - Cursor 1.0
• 28:04 - Codex gets internet access
• 31:09 - React Router’s open governance
• 34:18 - Fire Starter
• 39:55 - What’s making us happy

News:

• Paige - Cursor 1.0
• Jack - OpenAI’s Realtime Agent for AI chat
• TJ - The Browser Company stops developing Arc

Lightning News:

• React Router Open Governance
• Codex gets access to the internet

Fire Starter:

• console.log formatting strings

What Makes Us Happy this Week:

• Paige - Clarkson’s Farm season 4
• Jack - Shokz OpenRun Pro 2 headphones
• TJ - Rotary cheese grater

Thanks as always to our sponsor, the Blue Collar Coder channel on YouTube. You can join us in our Discord channel, explore our website and reach us via email, or talk to us on X, Bluesky, or YouTube.

• Front-end Fire website
• Blue Collar Coder on YouTube
• Blue Collar Coder on Discord
• Reach out via email
• Tweet at us on X @front_end_fire
• Follow us on Bluesky @front-end-fire.com
• Subscribe to our YouTube channel @Front-EndFirePodcast

It’s been 4 years since TypeScript schema validation library Zod released v3, but the new v4 release makes it worth the wait. Expect faster parsing times across the board, built in error pretty-printing, and even a tree-shakeable API called Zod Mini for constrained environments like edge runtimes.

There’s a new npm-based CLI tool for managing and sharing AI rules across different editors and tools called vibe-rules. In addition to saving favorite prompts so they can be applied to any supported editor, vibe-rules can also automatically install prompts shared in a project’s NPM packages into an editor’s configuration. It’s early days yet, but a great idea to make prompts easier for anyone to use.

Angular v20 is out with some much anticipated highlights. Stabilized signal-based APIs, incremental hydration, custom Angular reporting directly in Chrome DevTools, GenAI development advancements, and, last but not least, a RFC for an official Angular mascot. Not to bias you, but we favor the pink, dice-shaped mascot around here.

In this episode:

• 1:10 - Zod v4
• 5:50 - vibe-rules
• 15:12 - Angular 20
• 27:03 - Remix v3
• 31:32 - Stack Overflow’s Annual Dev Survey
• 38:02 - Firefox and Temporal
• 39:15 - Bolt’s hackathon status

News:

• Paige - Zod v4
• Jack - vibe-rules
• TJ - Angular 20

Lightning News:

• Remix v3 updates
• Firefox is the first browser to support Temporal (Temporal on MDN)
• StackOverflow’s Annual Dev Survey is out now
• Bolt’s hackathon starts

What Makes Us Happy this Week:

• Paige - Annual Gloucestershire cheese rolling race and Wiki history
• Jack - The Portland Pickles baseball game
• TJ - StoryGraph and The God of the Woods

Thanks as always to our sponsor, the Blue Collar Coder channel on YouTube. You can join us in our Discord channel, explore our website and reach us via email, or talk to us on X, Bluesky, or YouTube.

• Front-end Fire website
• Blue Collar Coder on YouTube
• Blue Collar Coder on Discord
• Reach out via email
• Tweet at us on X @front_end_fire
• Follow us on Bluesky @front-end-fire.com
• Subscribe to our YouTube channel @Front-EndFirePodcast